We don’t normally do this but last week we weren’t able to perform our usual daily updates on X. There were a lot of developments, so this is a weekly round up instead.

On Thursday January 15, Baroness Amanda Spielman hosted a news briefing at the House of Lords on the Pathways puberty suppression research, organised by Seen in Journalism and supported by Transgender Trend.

The aim was to broaden the range of views available (and deployed) in mainstream media, amid a misconception that there is a clinical consensus in support of the research.

It was attended by journalists from the BBC, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Economist, GB News, the BMJ, the Sun, PA, The Telegraph and Sky News, and more than a dozen freelance reporters who write regularly for a range of outlets including legacy outlets.

We heard from, and questions were directed at, Professor Michael Biggs, Dr Louise Irvine (GP, retd), clinical researcher Sinead Helyar and Professor Emeritus Susan Bewley.

Please read this account of the event in the British Medical Journal.

Towards the end of the week, Levi Pay reported his own FOI on how the Pathways trial is insured.

Just over a week ago the Darlington nurses were vindicated by an industrial tribunal over objecting to share a changing room with a man who says he is a woman, Rose/Tyler Henderson.

Coverage was widespread - including this extended interview in the Daily Mail. The BBC ran live updates on its front page - very due and a huge improvement on its previous selective bias on ‘gender critical’ cases - but its reporting was criticised for not headlining it as a victory. The coverage included Nursing Times and Personnel Today - both of which have previously had to be ‘encouraged’ to cover sex and gender stories.

The Darlington nurses were interviewed on Good Morning Britain, incidentally giving us more evidence that the BBC’s decision to explain that ‘trans women’ are biologically male is spreading across legacy media (see also ITV news). It’s becoming routine across outlets (except for Sky, which uses ‘born male’) and even traditionally recalcitrant papers like the Standard are at last explaining that ‘trans women’ aren’t female.

Channel 4 is the odd one out. Very outdated and insulting questioning here from Jackie Long, its social affairs editor. She repeatedly corrects Bethany Hutchison: - ‘Rose identifies as a woman and would like to be regarded as a woman and would find it very hurtful that you are talking about her as a man’ - instead of explaining that he is, in fact, a man.

In case you weren’t aware, the editor of Channel 4 News is Louisa Compton, who ten years ago launched Victoria Derbyshire with a massive push on ‘trans kids’ and followed it up with a tsunami of affirmative features. Now claims to sit on the fence on the issue.

The ‘sad men’ question and victim-blaming also made its appearance on GMB - Susannah Reid definitely knows better than this.

There was some evidence that the ‘trans ally’ pushback to the BBC’s ‘biological male’ policy is making its way into copy. The activists mobbing the BBC with complaints know that what the BBC does can, and will, lead to pan-media change (see above). So they’re furious about the ‘bio male’ rules, and we saw the impact of the complaints blitz in its poor piece on nurse Jennifer Melle by BBC London.

Melle was subject to an internal disciplinary action by an NHS Trust because she used accurate language to describe a convicted paedophile who was brought to the hospital from prison and needed a catheter. She was cleared and reinstated after a hearing.

The BBC had previously been criticised for not covering the story and this, its first effort, was atrocious. It omitted that that the complainant had been sentenced for child sex offences, instead emphasising Jennifer’s Christian beliefs. And significantly it did not explain that the patient was ‘biologically male’.

This breach of BBC guidelines was later updated after complaints - well done, people. Melle is continuing with her industrial tribunal. Heads must roll, says the Telegraph. The Times interviewed Jennifer Melle.

(This piece below also breached the BBC’s own internal rules and was not corrected. BBC Regions still needs a lot of work.)

We did get however a long form feature by the BBC’s Alison Holt on the NHS and its sex and gender policies, which was widely regarded as thorough and largely impartial.

We also had this piece from the BMJ on the NHS and single sex spaces. Great to see this attention at last. The first step is the coverage - the second is getting the language right.

Last Monday The Times reported that Judge Kemp, who presided over Sandie Peggie’s tribunal, was cleared of judicial misconduct. He’d issued more than a dozen corrections to his error-ridden ruling but blamed false information from an unnamed ‘judicial colleague’. The story was fairly well covered including in some unexpected quarters. More here - the Times followed up.

The Athena EU campaign to alert Europe to plans for a ‘soft law’ ‘conversion therapy’ ban gathered speed. There’s a call for people to alert their MPs and express their concern. It concerns the UK because it’s a Council of Europe move: in fact British MP Kate Osborne proposed it. Some coverage here and here: while the human rights group Sex Matters and the child safeguarding group Genspect also picked up the campaign.

Zero coverage but an excellent story: Barrister Allison Bailey announced that her lawyers had filed an application in the Court of Appeal seeking permission to take her case against Stonewall to the Supreme Court. Her lawyers are Ben Cooper KC, Akua Reindorf KC and Anya Palmer, and solicitor Peter Daly.

There wasn’t a great deal of coverage of this story either but it’s important (thanks GB News and Telegraph). Emma Bateman, former co-chair of Green Party Women, is suing the party for discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 after being suspended.

She’d said at a Speakers’ Corner event: ‘Every time someone says men are not women, a person with fairy pronouns literally dies.’ This was found to be antagonistic and in breach of party rules. It’s a free speech issue as much as a ‘gender critical’ issue.

Mini round up

Latest: Good to see this exposed by the Daily Mail. ‘NHS gets midwives to fill in ‘farcical’ forms with no option to record biological sex and instead ask parents what their newborn baby’s ‘gender identity’ is’

Latest: More from The Times on how policy compliance with gender identity theory can turn insititutions and careers to dust. On Swinney and men in women’s prisons.

There was outrage after it emerged that the civil service has advertised for a trans equality officer. Great story originally in The Telegraph

In Wales, the National Resources Wales body was accused of breaking the law by allowing men to use female spaces. Its guidance says employees can ‘use the toilets of the gender with which they identify’.

In Bristol, the Women of Wessex launched judicial review proceedings in the High Court over the banning of two women from the City Council for six months. Dr Phoebe Beedell and Wendy Stephenson has asked questions about what the local government lawyer mag calls its ‘trans inclusion policy’ - that was enough for the women to be described as ‘intimidatory and offensive’.

In Ireland, a judge refused to use preferred name and pronouns of child in state care who is said to be transgender. The Journal uses the activist jargon term ‘transgender child’ and interviews an ‘‘LGBTQ+ charity’, with no balancing voice, as if it’s a scandal.

The Chief Executive of the Charity Commission for England and Wales said it was ‘vital’ that the EHRC publishes an updated code of practice on the Su[reme Court ruling ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’. It was in response to an open letter from governance consultant Penny Wilson

In London, in an apparent step back to 2018, Wandsworth Council told all its staff to announce themselves with their ‘personal pronouns’ in meetings.

The Law Gazette reported that senior judges will engage annually with judicial networks representing cohorts such as black, LGBTQ+ and women judges in a new diversity strategy.

Don’t miss this piece by lawyer Naomi Cunningham on the trans rights rallying cry, Protect the Dolls

More blogs not to miss: Biology in Medicine on GPs not having to refer patients to gender clinics and Transgender Trend on the Pathways puberty blocker trial

Make sure you miss this embarrassing podcast from the Guardian which interviewed a man (who says he’s a woman) about ‘fear and abuse’ in the US driving people to ‘seek refuge’ in Europe. It was picked up by the Daily Mail whose US desk continues to be profoundly more compliant than UK editors.

Finally - Baroness Sharron Davies took her seat in the House of Lords. Congratulations Lady Davies.